


Love Is

by inkvoices



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Community: be_compromised, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-09 14:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3253061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/pseuds/inkvoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt from franztastisch/CloudAtlas in the 2014 be_compromised Valentine's Mini Promptathon: Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. This is what love is. [Welcome to Night Vale]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CloudAtlas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/gifts).



Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. This is what love is. 

It’s a game that children play, spilling secrets until they find a trustworthy soul who can embrace them, contain them, hold them cupped inside their hands without letting them overflow into someone else’s hearing. It’s a game for children, who give things away without hesitation far too often, without a thought for the consequences. It’s a game that inevitably hurts.

You can kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. You can love a lot of people before you find one who loves you back. You can collect the shattered pieces of yourself as you are destroyed over and over. It’s how the fairytales go; you can never have what you want the very first time.

Better never to try than to fail. 

Especially when your secrets are so sharp and your fault lines are becoming clearer every day. Especially not with people who already have power over you, more than you have allowed anyone to hold over you since you were too young to know any better. Especially when you want (which is the most dangerous secret of all). 

Better never to try, but when he whispers into your ear, voice sex-rough and love-soft; when he tells you the name of his brother, the reasons his marriage failed, his worst nightmares; when he holds out his pieces to you, broken but still precious… When he whispers his secrets to you, he makes you believe in mutually assured destruction. 

This is what love is.


End file.
